


That I May Rise and Stand

by voksen



Category: Les Misérables (1978), Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Javert Survives, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-28
Updated: 2013-06-28
Packaged: 2017-12-16 09:41:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,449
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/860688
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/voksen/pseuds/voksen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Some promises, even sacred ones, are better left unkept.</p>
            </blockquote>





	That I May Rise and Stand

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Icarus5800](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Icarus5800/gifts).



"Turn around," Javert said.

Valjean could not miss the bitter mirror of the words or the chill tang of irony in Javert's voice. Their history was too long for that; it was a history made of too many long looks like these, too many moments where one man had held the life of the other in his hands. For Marius' sake more than his own, Valjean hoped that this would not be the last such. He turned his face to the wall, put his hands on the cold stone, gave Javert his back. 

There was silence between them. In its depths, Valjean wondered if the moment in the alley behind the barricades had seemed so long to Javert, each heartbeat so precious; if the students' ropes had gripped so tight at Javert's throat, when Valjean had pulled him by them then, as the phantom chains now chafed at him.

He had been counting: _one, two, three,_ words to fill up the quiet and the waiting. At _two_ it occured to him that perhaps he should have been praying; at _three_ , he heard - something, he was not sure what. A whisper of leather against stone or cloth against cloth; the shiver of a slightly too-loud breath.

For a moment he was not certain what to do. He felt captured; choked and bound, though the ghostly martingale that lingered at his throat and about his wrists could not have been cut with a knife even if Javert were the sort of man to try. He could wait. It would be easy - easier - to wait.

The wall was very hard under his fingertips. Valjean turned his head, just a little, and saw not the barrel of Javert's gun but his heels as he walked almost-silently away towards the twist of the sewer. He had not meant to speak; there was no sense in it, no reason; it was as if the word was torn from him: "Javert?"

That tall unbent figure hesitated only an instant, but it was long enough for Valjean to see the gun held loosely in Javert's grip, pointing only at the ground. Valjean let his hands fall from the wall without waiting for leave and stepped away from it entirely. "Javert," he said again.

Javert, inches from the turn in the sewer, stopped fully, but did not turn back. "What," he said. There was a terrible weight in his voice that mystified Valjean entirely. "What do you want of me now, Valjean?"

What did he want of Javert? He did not want to die, as Javert had seemed to want from his hands; there was too much left undone. He wanted freedom, as he had always wanted freedom. Javert seemed to be offering it to him now, but even with this unexplained mercy almost in his grasp, the chains had not felt so heavy about Valjean's throat for long years. _Be severe with me,_ Javert had said. _Someday I'll kill you,_ Valjean had said. His mind was awash with parallels and uncertainties, a stretch of unexamined and half-formed questions; he almost envied Javert in his unwavering blinkered road for having had only one simple thing to ask.

But it was impossible that Javert would stand and tell him all the things he wanted to know, nor listen to all the things he wanted to say, even if Valjean had had better words on hand than those he had managed and that Javert had rejected in rejecting God. And, besides, it was not a good time for explanation; it never had been a good time; possibly for them it never would be. He hesitated an instant longer, uncertain into his soul despite everything, and in that second of silence Marius - he had almost forgotten Marius in his confusion over Javert - gave a tiny shuddering sigh.

"Help me with the boy," he said.

Then Javert did turn back, a sudden, jerky motion like a strung puppet, incredulity scrawled plainly across his face. "Help you?" he echoed.

Valjean made an abortive gesture towards Marius, lying unmoving on the stone stairs where Valjean had left him at Javert's interruption. The sunlight that fell through the iron grate lay in pallid bars across his face; Valjean tried not to make an omen of it. "Please, Javert."

The honesty, the _openness_ between them was a new thing, born there in the sewers of whatever strange force of coincidence which has thrown them together again and again, and Javert seemed to know no better what to do with it than he. "I--" he began, then cut himself off with a grimace.

"He is not yet dying," Valjean pressed, "but he needs a doctor - together we can get him to one." He considered offering himself, his parole, but checked himself: he did not think Javert had been walking away to gain range with which to shoot him, and although he did not understand what drives him, he remembered well - from Toulon and Montreuil alike - the cold yet wounded severity with which Javert took insult.

"You could carry him to one yourself," Javert said, but he was coming forwards despite his words; he passed Valjean - for an instant he was no more than an inch away, and Valjean repressed an instinctual shudder - and then he mounted the stairs and bent over Marius, putting his pistol away and pressing his fingers to the boy's throat. "He might as well be dead," he added a moment later.

"But he is not," Valjean said, "there is still a chance he will live." Slowly, with deliberate movements - though he did not know whether it was Javert's nerves he was attempting to spare or his own - he climbed the stair to stand next to Javert. The space was narrow enough that as he drew alongside their shoulders brushed inescapably. Javert betrayed no reaction, but only stood stone still beside him, staring fixedly down at Marius. Valjean glanced over nervously and saw a strange fey light in his eyes, though the determined set of the mouth was familiar enough to be almost reassuring.

Javert did not answer - but he did not object, either, and after another moment Valjean stepped up past him into the square of light below the manhole. Despite the long struggle through the sewers, there was strength in him yet; he climbed the ladder and hefted the heavy grate off with no great trouble, then slid back down.

When he reached the stairs again Javert looked up from Marius's body; his eyes flicked over Valjean as if searching for something misplaced. "There is no chance for him," he said again, as firmly as he had told Valjean that there was no God.

Valjean forced himself with some effort to believe that Javert was as wrong in this as he had been wrong about the other; that it was only the pessimism of the faithless speaking and not a true judgement. "Then I will give him one, as the man I spoke of gave one to me." 

Carefully, he lifted Marius to his shoulder - the poor boy groaned again but did not stir - and returned to the ladder, beginning the climb at once. There was a second of silence behind him broken only by the drip of water from their clothes to the stone - and then quick footsteps before some little of the weight shifted and steadied on his shoulders as Javert reached up from below them to support Marius and keep him balanced. As Valjean climbed forth into the light at last, he sent up a quiet but heartfelt prayer.

When he reached the surface he gently set Marius down and looked him over again, wiping dirt from his face with the cleanest part of his shirtsleeve: his breathing was shallow, his pulse fluttering and weak - but he was still alive. Valjean took one deep breath, then another - there was still the stench of sewage, but the air was fresher aboveground and that was something, at least - and then got doggedly to his feet and hefted the body into his arms one last time. 

By the time he straightened, Javert had climbed silently up the ladder behind him. In the sunlight he looked strangely pale, almost as bloodless as Marius, and unnervingly clean, as if the filth of the sewers had touched him no more than the filth of the streets. Javert took only a brief glance at Valjean and his burden before bending and heaving the grate back into place with a loud clang that shook Valjean out of his distraction. Without looking up again, Javert turned away, staring out at the road. "Then you'll want a coach," he said, "unless you expect a miracle to carry you there."


End file.
